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One of Our Aircraft Is Missing Reviews:
From Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger: The story of a British bomber crew and the Dutch resistance
2006-09-19 - One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, released in 1942, was the first film Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made after formalizing their partnership as The Archers, with both taking equal credit for writing, producing and directing. In 1941 they had collaborated on The 49th Parallel. In 1943 they would make The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, the first of a series of masterpieces they created in the Forties. In practice, Powell directed, Pressburger wrote and did most of the producing, and they closely collaborated on every aspect of their films.

The movie tells the story of the crewmen who bailed out of their bomber, B for Bertie, over The Netherlands in 1941. Even more, it tells the story of the Dutch men and women who endangered their own lives to give the crew shelter, to protect them and to pass them on to the North coast of Holland until rescue could be arranged.

Bertie, a two-engine bomber, is returning from a run over Stuttgart when it's hit by flak. The plane loses an engine but the crew nurse the plane along until the second engine stutters out over Holland. The six-man crew bail out. Five land together; one is missing. There is John Haggard (Hugh Burden), the pilot and the youngest; Tom Earnshaw (Eric Portman), the co-pilot, a Yorkshire businessman before the war; Frank Shelley (Hugh Williams), the navigator, a West End actor with a famous wife; Bob Ashley (Emrys Jones), the radio operator, a soccer star; Geoff Hickman (Bernard Miles), the front gunner, an owner of an auto garage; and George Corbett (Godfrey Tearle), the rear gunner, at least twenty-five years older than the others, a knight, a member of parliament who immediately signed up with the Royal Air Force when war was declared.

The crew, which is shortly reunited, now must trust the men and women of Holland. With one clever ruse after another they finally arrive at a house on the edge of the North Sea, owned by a woman who professes hatred of the English. She runs fishing boats and has the town's German detachment headquartered in her home. Eventually, in the middle of a British bombing attack, she will take them down to her basement, put them in a row boat, have one of her fishing boats meet them and take them to a German rescue buoy bobbing in the middle of the North Sea. There is a radio in the buoy. With a little luck the crew will be picked up by a British ship before a German ship arrives. She has done this before.

At each step of the crew's journey through Holland they meet more men and women who will put their lives at risk for the crew. The Dutch know who they are and protect them. The Germans suspect there is a British crew about, but can't find them. We meet a burgomeister (Hay Petrie) whose young son plays a dangerous trick on the Germans, a young priest (Peter Ustinov), a brave church organist (Alec Clunes) and a frightened Dutch collaborator (Robert Helpmann). At each step the situations grow increasingly tense and dangerous.

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing is a propaganda movie. It is precisely because Powell and Pressburger were so unwilling to do the ordinary and the expected that it holds up very well nearly 65 years later. For instance...

--There is no phony derring do or heroics. The Dutch get the job done in threatening situations, but with bravery that is understated. The crew know their lives depend on these men and women and learn quickly to do as they are told.

--We hardly see a German. And we never see a ranting, raving German officer or an enlisted goon. The German threat hangs over the movie, but it is made more effective by being subtle.

--The class consciousness of many British war movies, with the officers brave and well bred and the working class enlisted men often used for comic relief, is muted. All members of the crew have their own characteristics. All are members of the same team.

--The bravest of the Dutch, the most resourceful and the ones with the iciest nerves, are the women. From Else Meertens (Pamela Brown), a schoolteacher in a small community, to Jo de Vries (Googie Withers), who plays a risky double game with the Germans and owns the fishing boats, it is the women to whom the crew owe their salvation.

--There is no musical score. What we hear is wind rushing by, boots marching, the creak of windmills, water lapping at a stone pier and, often, just silence. Only a director as sure of himself as Powell could get away without using music to cue us what to feel.

--As tense as many of the situations are, Powell and Pressburger never shy away from humor in unlikely situations. It works because it allows us to know the characters better and to let us catch our breath before another dangerous scene starts. And they are sly. You have to be quick (or read a couple of reviews, which is what I did) to catch at least two puns they throw into the action.

--The opening, and especially the closing, is typically quirky and satisfying. I won't even try to describe them.

The movie was dedicated to the members of the Dutch resistance. We last see the crew getting ready to board their new bomber, this one a big four-engine job. Their target? Berlin.

This movie is available in VHS tape but the film quality isn't very good. During night scenes often the only things visible are search lights, the moon and the whites of eyes. The Region 2 DVD available from Amazon UK is not perfect (the picture is a bit soft) but the film looks much better and is well worth buying.

Wartime British docudrama
2006-01-12 - "One of Our Aircraft is Missing" is a fairly typical 1941 propagandized black and white documentary style film chronicling the heroism of the R.A.F.

A crew of six flying a bombing mission into the heart of the German industrial city of Stuttgart gets hit by anti aircraft fire and sustains engine damage. The crew including veteran British actors Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman and Bernard Miles, must abandon their plane on the way back to base. They parachute into German occupied Holland, some 40 miles from possible rescue at the North Sea.

They are discovered by friendly local villagers who feed and hide them and coordinate their escape and return to England. Led by a patriotic school teacher Else Merteens played by Pamela Brown who is a member of the Dutch underground, the crew's escape is orchestrated under the noses of the hated Nazis.

The film serves as both a testament to the determined fliers of the Royal Air Force and the courage of the Dutch people who fought against the oppression of the Germans.

A well-made, timeless British propaganda film
2003-04-23 - One of Our Aircraft Is Missing is a British propaganda film from 1941; leaving aside the propaganda aspects, it is a well-made motion picture that was nominated for best original screenplay as well as best special effects at the 1942 American Academy Awards (Casablanca took best picture). It also did quite well at the box office. The British bomber Bertie takes a hit during a nighttime bombing raid over Stuttgart, Germany, and her six-man RAF crew is forced to parachute to safety over German-occupied Dutch territory. Five of the men are discovered by some friendly children and are taken to town where an English-speaking schoolteacher helps facilitate their escape. The men are furtively passed along the sixty or so miles to the North Sea through a veritable underground railroad of Dutch resistance, eventually linking up with the pilot they feared had been lost. Interestingly, the most heroic assistance comes from women like the schoolteacher Els Mertens and the truly remarkable Jo de Vries. De Vries supposedly hates the British for having killed her husband in an air raid and works closely with the local German forces whom she secretly despises; this makes her the perfect final contact for the English airmen seeking to return home by sea. The final stages of the great escape do prove somewhat harrowing, but the RAF men do honor to the ancient creed of "being British" throughout the most dangerous moments. De Vries delivers a stirring ovation for the resistance and war efforts, and any Englishman or American who didn't already hate the Germans would have been more than willing to take up arms immediately and rush off to The Netherlands to free this remarkable woman and her friends in the Dutch resistance from Hitler's nefarious grip. One of the more interesting aspects of the film has to do with the Dutch resistance in general; the Dutch have a way of obeying German orders in a way that never fails to get under the occupying soldiers' skins. One of Our Aircraft Is Missing proves that propaganda can sometimes have a completely positive connotation, and the story itself is well-presented and quite timeless in its appeal.

"W" for Wonderful
2002-07-21 - In some ways, this is even better than that other great Powell-
Pressburger-Portman film, "49th Parallel." The casting here is
uniformly perfect. All of the stars act with a natural grace
that is a joy to watch. The propaganda is not too obvious, nor
forced. And the sly humor of certain scenes is fun (don't miss
Frank in a dress). Eric Portman is wonderful is usual, but the
entire cast is terrific. Yes, that is Peter Ustinov as a priest!
Don't miss this wonderful gem.

Never have so few done so much for so many.
2000-06-27 - During the Allied Bombing offensive of World War II the public was often informed that "A raid took place last night over ..., One (or often more) of Our Aircraft Is Missing". Behind these sombre words hid tales of death, destruction and derring-do. This is the story of one such bomber crew who were shot down and the brave Dutch patriots who helped them home.